Saturday, May 17, 2008

Flying Colours

Today I went to XY's kindy for Parent-Teacher's Day to collect her progress report and test results. This is the first time she had a test (of 5 subjects) as they don't have any tests in Year 4. The exam week started on 5th May. I prepared her a little by giving her extra exercises (especially for Maths). She enjoyed the exercises (addition and subtraction) as I wrote it on the drawing board and she thought we were playing games. If she got all the answers correct, I'll draw her some stars, which made her so happy. Sometimes when she doesn't get all correct, I'll only give her one star. But she'll request for more. :-| I also did some revision with her on Bahasa Malaysia (BM) and Science.

When the teacher showed me her results, I was very surprised and felt very proud, of course. She got full score for 4 subjects (BM, English, Mandarin and Maths) and 68% for Science. Her teacher told me she was competing with a friend during Science test, to see who finished first. Probably that's why she didn't do it properly. Then she added that the paper was quite tough for their age. They were tested on what sinks/floats, what are soluble things, what are mechanical toys. Although these were taught in school, I think they are quite difficult for a 5 year-old to comprehend.

As for her overall progress, teacher said she's a bright girl. Very independent in her work. Loves computer and music lessons. She is sometimes talkative in class. In my mind, I was thinking... "sometimes"? I guess the teacher was just being polite. : ) Yeah... I got the same comment last year. She just likes to talk. And she's been punished numerous times for not keeping quiet when asked to. Then the teacher added that she's very forgiving. She doesn't keep in heart when the teacher scolded her. The downside is she doesn't remember and will misbehave over and over again.

When I got home, I looked at the Science paper again and I felt something wasn't right. So I recalculated her marks. She actually got 84% (not 68% - that's a BIG difference, okay). I'm going to let the teacher know on Tuesday and get her marks and grade corrected. Now, that's not too bad ya. Actually, I'm not too concerned about the marks (really? :p). Moreover, I'm sure it was a guided test. The teacher read and explained to them the instructions. And read the words for those fill in the blank questions. But it's good to know that she understands what's being taught in school.

So how did we reward her? I gave her the VTech Quiz Biz Math Mania, which I've kept for more than a month. I redeemed it with PaPa's credit card points when he wanted to cancel the card. This toy has action, math and logic games which teaches addition & subtraction, time telling and logic & memory.

~ her reward ~

She's very excited with her new toy. Can't stop playing with it. I'll have to control her playing time, otherwise, she'd want to play the whole day. Well, at least it's educational in some way.